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2008J30Skeffington

Leaving Reality Behind: Fantasy, Virtual Space, and Literacy
Reviewed by Jillian Skeffington
jillian@u.arizona.edu

• Joanna Phillips, Auburn University: “The Literate Warcraft Gamer: Literacy Development Through Multimodal Acquirement in the MMORPG Semiotic Domain.”
• Susanna Coleman, Auburn University: “‘A Real Reflection of How I Write’: Young Women, Agency, and Fan Fiction.”
• Victoria Lisle, Auburn University: “Literacy at the Crossroad of Formal and Informal Learning: Tracing Homeschooled Students' Technological Literacy Acquisition in an Online Community.“
• Kristen Miller, Auburn University “Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide: Using the Unreal to Teach Ethos.”

This group of graduate students from Auburn University presented an interesting mix of techniques and theories regarding writing in the classroom and on the web.

The first speaker, Joanna Phillips, discussed the role of literacy in MMORPG games such as World of Warcraft. (For those of us not involved in the movement, the acronym stands for Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games.) These are the games in which players are linked to other players via the internet, and communicate both via text and voice. Phillips analyzed the textual and visual information in these games, specifically World of Warcraft, which require players to read, write, and problem solve in order to progress through the game. This presentation stems from research in which she surveyed several gamers about their playing techniques and literacy practices within the game. She analyzed several actions required in the game and how they can contribute to literacy and learning. She argued that there is room for collaboration between this kind of literacy-based learning and the composition classroom.

Susanna Coleman examined the writing lives of young women involved in fan fiction, usually called fanfic. Fan fiction is any writing that uses the characters and settings established by another author. While much fan fiction is located in online communities and fan sites, there are some notable fanfic successes. The novel Wicked is one, as are the continuation stories from Gone with the Wind and Pride and Prejudice. Coleman explained that most fanfic writers are adolescent women, and she wanted to examine how composition instructors might incorporate qualities from this genre of writing into their assignments. She provided detailed references for background into fan fiction writing and studies, and explained her own case study of a young fanfic writer called Madame Luna. Coleman saw fanfic as a space where female writers can disrupt normal power structures (often by queering male characters). However, school-based fanfic assignments (which are fairly common at the high school level) contain so many restrictions that they remove the agency that fanfic writers usually get through this type of writing. She called for more research on fanfic writers, school fanfic assignments, and the ways in which those two might productively meet.

Victoria Lisle’s work is on the presence of home-schooled students in the college classroom. As a former home-schooled student herself, she has some vested interest in creating a greater understanding of this population. Her presentation focused on a group of students participating in an online course in literature that Lisle taught/moderated. She noticed several trends in their discourse and how they used and appropriated the online space. The students were oriented toward family and respect for authority, and religious discourse was common in the discussions. However, the students were very adept at switching between the conversational, social sections of the course website, and the formal class discussion page. Throughout the entire year, Lisle did not have to remind anyone to continue posting in the academic section. Lisle saw possibilities in studying both home-schooled and institutionally schooled students, especially in the spaces in which learning occurs. For home-schooled students, learning does not necessarily occur in a set time at a set location; rather it is a constant practice. Lisle called for further research into this population to confound the monolithic conception of the home-schooled student and to examine the ways that literacy develops both in and out of school.

Kristen Miller’s presentation was a demonstration of how Max Brooks’ The Zombie Survival Guide could be used effectively to teach ethos in the first-year composition course. The book parodies serious survival guides, but is written in a tone that is meant to be taken seriously. It has detailed history and background, complete with references, maps, and diagrams. Miller argued that using this work allowed students to focus on how an author can establish credibility in a situation where credibility is the basis of his effectiveness. It was an interesting idea, and Miller presented it well, providing visuals from the book and samples from student writing. She noted that this sort of work also prompts students to think more critically about other things they read and encounter, providing room for a discussion of writing and moving from the Guide to their own texts. Using something so obviously false lowers the stakes in terms of student authority, and gives students room to criticize the author.

There was no real time for a discussion, but the audience did ask some questions for clarification.